


Bonus round 4 - fill 1

by oyogihodai (alder_knight)



Series: SASO 2016 fills [13]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Curses, Drowning, FML, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Swimming, To Be Edited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 17:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7472538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alder_knight/pseuds/oyogihodai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/15224.html?thread=6494328#cmt6494328">Prompt</a>:</p><p>
  <i>here is what the boy said to the sea:</i>
  <br/>
  <i>
    <b>take my life, but do not take </b>
  </i>
  <br/>
  <b>
    <i>my love from me. </i>
  </b>
  <br/>
  <i>and the sea remembered. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonus round 4 - fill 1

**Author's Note:**

> this story takes place in the same universe but diverts from canon, plot-wise.

The tent was dark, but the boys had a small flashlight to pass around, illuminating whoever spoke. The crash of the surf was audible in the distance, down and away from the raised grass beneath their tent.

In the morning, Rin would be leaving for Australia to go to a special swimming school. Tonight, the winning medley relay team of the Iwatobi Swimming Club shared snacks and stories as the moon rose outside.

“All the men in my family,” said Rin. “Not just my father. My grandmother said there’s a curse on our men.”

“A curse?” Nagisa’s eyes grew wide. Makoto clutched the mouth of his sleeping bag tightly in his fists. Rin’s expression remained somber.

“A curse,” he repeated. “My father, and my father’s father, and my father’s father’s father. The sea took them all.”

Haruka was listening and scowling. He watched Nagisa grow excited and Makoto grow fearful, and he said nothing. It was just a story. Rin was a romantic with a flair for the dramatic. Of course something so common as a fisherman’s death would be spun into a fanciful tale of magic and sorrow under his direction. Haruka rolled his back to the others in his sleeping bag, burrowing in.

“Do you still miss him?” Makoto asked softly, and immediately Haruka felt shame at his dismissal.

Rin had lost his father. He was allowed to make up stories if it made him feel better.

Distantly, the sea snapped and hissed against the breakwater.

***

Haruka was having nightmares again. Tonight, they weren’t about racing, or the end of high school, or losing his way in another dry maze.

He dreamed he was swimming with Rin.

The ocean buoyed them both. Rin carved through the waves, tall and lean, swimming out deep. Keeping pace behind him, Haruka felt the raw freedom he’d always hungered for. Then the bottom dropped out of his euphoria as he realized the water had wrapped hungry tentacles around Rin and was dragging him out, deeper and deeper, pulling him under.

Haruka tried to yell, to make the water stop, but it forced itself into his mouth, his nose, rejecting him, rejecting him, dragging at him and tossing him and finally regurgitating him onto the rough sand.

 _Please_ , Haruka thought blindly, fighting for air, begging the sea, _please, give him back_.

The sea was placid and flat.

Rin was gone.

***

Haruka tossed a handful of coins. He rattled the bell, clapped his hands, bowed. Head inclined, eyes closed, he prayed:

 _Let Rin finish the race and come back to me_.

He remained still for a long moment, breathing slowly.

Then he straightened up, clapped his hands again, and moved away from the shrine to allow others forward to pray. He approached the handrail by the steep downward slope that angled away from this mountainside shrine to Susa-no-wo.

Distantly, the Tsugaru Strait glittered benignly under the bright sunlight, swaddling Hokkaido, separating it from the island Haruka had always called home. Rin would be swimming the marathon across it in the morning.

Haruka glared down at the water.

 _You can’t have him_ , he thought bitterly.

The sea shimmered. _We’ll see about that_.

***

Five hours in, the sky grows dark.

“I can’t make sense of it,” the old fisherman apologizes, steering his boat through the wind waves that have begun to chop the surface of the strait. “The skies were clear, the forecast said we’d have blue skies through the weekend.”

Distantly, Haruka can see Rin fighting the current and the rising swell. The grease that the open-water marathon swimmers use to coat themselves before their journeys has mostly worn off, and Rin’s arms plunge unprotected into the raw salt of the surf over and over. Haruka looks at the sky. It’s getting worse.

“Grandfather,” he says to their guide, not unkindly, “how far is it?”

The old man squints. “The current is picking up. At this rate, another two hours, at least.”

Haruka shakes his head. The sky is threatening rain. Rin’s coach is not here today, which makes it Haruka’s call to end the swim early. Rin won’t like it. Rin never wants to give up, especially this far into a swim. Haruka’s fingertips are white with pressure where they grip his elbows. Thunder rattles in the distance.

“Go,” says Haruka, “get him out now.”

The fishing boat chugs towards Rin, gaining on his struggling form, when a plunging storm wave takes him and he’s dragged below.

Haruka throws off his windsuit and is in the water in a heartbeat.

***

 _You’re too late, child_.

 _I’m not. Give him back_.

Haruka strokes furiously through the surging dark water, reaching out with all of his senses to find Rin. 

_You can’t help him_. The current tugs at Haruka, and he leans into it, takes its momentum to propel him further down. _He was mine from the day he was born_.

 _He never was_.

_Oh?_

_No_. Haruka catches a minute change in temperature, a flash of warmth, and in a trice he’s shot in its direction. His lungs burn, his eyes burn, his skin burns, but his fingers close around Rin’s wrist, Rin, Rin who is still struggling weakly, alive, alive, and he rockets them both up to the surface.

 _This is my love and you cannot have him_.

They break the surface and Haruka sucks in a breath. Rin coughs, vomiting out seawater. The sky has opened. The air is half water.

The water wants Rin back.

 _You cannot have him_. Rain pelts the their heads. Haruka struggles, treading furiously, carrying Rin as dead weight in the intensifying storm.

 _Foolish child_.

Haruka almost panics when something brushes his ankle, but then the boat is close, and a ring preserver flies towards him. He grabs for it desperately, throws Rin over it, uses it to help the fisherman haul them both back to the boat.

Haruka feels the brush on his foot again and something like a dreading comprehension begins to dawn.

_Debts must be paid, child. What are you offering in his place?_

Haruka understands at last. He sighs out a long, shuddering breath, and the water accepts it.

The fisherman is pulling Rin’s weakened body up onto the deck. Rin continues to retch; seawater foams out of him.

“Rin,” Haruka calls, and for one moment of lucidity Rin comes out of his marathon haze and locks eyes with him. “I -”

The sea collects its payment, and everything goes dark.

**Author's Note:**

> WOW would this have benefited from a beta reader and some editing time, wow wow.
> 
> fuck angst. why did I do this. I'm so upset. orz
> 
> THERE IS SO MUCH ABOUT THIS THAT I WOULD FIX BUT IT'S A MEME FILL AND WE'RE SUPER BEHIND SO HERE YOU GO.


End file.
